In general, a toilet (referring to a western style toilet) refers to, but not limited to, a sitting type western toilet on which a person sits and relieves himself/herself and includes other type of toilets using water.
Such a toilet generally includes: a seat on which a user sits to relieve herself/himself; a toilet body for discharging excrement to a septic tank together with supplied water; a water tank which is provided on one upper end portion of the toilet body and supplies, stores, and discharges the supplied water to thereby discharge excrement to the septic tank.
Such a toilet has a structure, in which urine and feces discharged from the eliminatory organ of a user when the user relieves herself/himself are temporarily stored and discharged, is therefore liable to severely stink simultaneously with defecation, is prone to allow various pathogenic bacteria, such as well-known salmonella, Escherichia coli, shigella, globalrium bacteria, and the like to grow. In particular, it has been announced that in a region contacting the user's body, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and the like grow.
However, these pathogens may also be harmful according to a user's health condition. Diseases caused by these pathogens may be a variety of skin diseases, respiratory diseases, etc., and severe discomfort is caused by these pathogens when the user uses a toilet.
In this regard, multiple patent documents, such as Korean Patent Publication No. 2004-0103432, Korean Patent Publication No. 2010-0049464, Korean Patent Publication No. 2010-0106892, Korean Patent No. 0568252, and Korean Utility Model No. 0393220, have disclosed techniques for removing an odor occurring when using the toilet.
However, the disclosed techniques mostly adopt methods using chemicals, ultraviolet processing, ultrasonic cleaning, or the like, as a means for deodorizing to remove an odor or pathogen, and for sterilization, pasteurization, and antibacterial process. Thus, the disclosed techniques have a drawback of having a complicated structure, high manufacturing costs, while having an unsatisfactory effect.
Therefore, most users prevent pathogens from spreading into the entire restroom by operating a lever while a lid is put on the toilet bowl after using the toilet. This is because various reports and mass media reported that the spread of the pathogen was reduced by more than two times when the lid was put on the toilet bowl compared to that when the lid was not put on the toilet bowl.
However, since there is inconvenience to put on the toilet bowl lid every time, most users do not carefully put the lid on the toilet bowl due to the inconvenience or the like. In addition, although an action of putting the lid on the toilet bowl should be made on purpose, it is easy to forget the action, and thus, it is not easy in fact to make the action of putting the lid on the toilet bowl.
In order to solve this, the present applicant had filed multiple patents, such as Korean Patent No. 1502302, Korean Patent No. 1382693, and Korean Patent No. 1409515 based on the results of years of research.
Meanwhile, although the aforementioned toilets use a method of processing excrement by cause water to flow and be stored in a water tank while being equipped with a water tank, the method consumes too much water, water pressure used in the method is too low, and too much installation space is required. Therefore, unlike the above method, a direct water-type toilet has also been widespread in which the water tank is not equipped with a water tank, and the water supply pipe is directly connected without a water tank, so that water can be supplied to only in case of necessity.
For example, in a direct water-type toilet, as illustrated in FIG. 1, a water supply pipe 20 for supplying water to a toilet body 100 is installed in the rear side of the toilet body 100, and a direct-water pipe 40 which is a tap water pipe is directly connected to the water supply pipe 20 via a valve body 300. When a user pushes a lever 32 provided to the valve body 300 after using the toilet, the water pressure applied to the tap water pipe is directly applied to supply the water and thereby discharge excrement.
Such a structure, as described above, is simple, does not occupy much installation space, and has a merit of having excellent discharge capability due to a high water pressure.
However, such a direct water-type toilet has a difficulty in being provided with a device for removing an odor.
This is because in the case of a water tank type, a method of removing an odor by using a water tank can be adopted, but in the case of the direct-water type, there is no water tank, and thus, at most a detachable-type deodorization device disclosed in Korean Patent No. 1058923 or Japanese Patent Publication No. 1996-277563 can only be adopted.
However, since the disclosed detachable type has a structure which is attached to and then detached from a toilet body, it is very inconvenient to sit thereon, the outer appearance is not satisfactory, and in particular, since men urinates while standing, urine scattered during urination stains the toilet, and thus, the detachable type has a drawback of being sanitarily unclean.
In addition, recently, water-saving toilets have been disclosed according to governmental policies, the water-saving toilets are the types designed such that water for cleaning the inside of the toilet boy made of porcelain is supplied through a path different from that of water for discharging excrement so as to prevent waste of water.
That is, a general toilet is configured such that when the toilet is flushed with water, while the water having filled a water tank is poured down into a toilet body, one portion of the water is poured down together through a plurality of washing water holes formed in an inner peripheral surface of the toilet body to cause excrement to flow to a toilet drain port, and the other portion washes the inner wall surface of the toilet body.
Therefore, in this structure, the water tank should be designed considering even washing water, and thus, waste of water is excessive and contributes to accelerate water shortage phenomenon which is getting worse. Thus, the water-saving toilet was disclosed to solve this problem.
However, while many techniques for removing an odor in general-type toilets, the technique of removing an odor in the water-saving toilets is not yet satisfactory, and thus, an improvement on this is being demanded.